In the matting of a picture, in order to have the picture bordered by a mat to create an aesthetically pleasing effect, it is conventional for one to align the picture with respect to an opening formed in a front mat and then adhesively secure the aligned picture to the back surface of the front mat. Frequently, this is a difficult task, since the picture must first be viewed through the opening in the mat to align the picture, and then the picture must not be moved while it is being adhesively secured to the back surface of the mat.
A further drawback of the above method of matting is that the adhesive used to secure the picture to the mat frequently mars the picture if the picture is subsequently removed from the mat.
To overcome the drawbacks of prior art mat structures, I invented the mat structure described in my application Ser. No. 459,053 mentioned above. This patented mat structure allowed one to easily align pictures, especially photographs, with respect to an opening in a mat and secure the picture to the mat without any adhesives.
In this mat structure described in application Ser. No. 459,053, a front mat 10 in FIG. 1, having outer dimensions larger than a picture to be matted, is formed with a basically centered opening 12. A second mat 22, shown in FIG. 3, is formed to have an opening 18 equal to or smaller than the opening 12 in the front mat 10 and to have outer dimensions identical to the size of the picture to be matted. A third mat 16, shown in FIG. 3, of a size identical to the front mat 10 has an opening 20 with dimensions identical to the outer dimensions of the second mat 22 and, thus, has an opening identical to the size of the picture to be matted.
A solid back-side mat 24, shown in FIG. 4, is secured to the back surface of the third mat 16 so that the opening 20 in the third mat 16 forms a well. The picture, having identical dimensions as the well, is then placed within the well.
The second mat 22 is then placed over the picture in the well. This may be done by first securing the second mat 22 to the back of the front mat 10 and placing the structure over a picture 26 in the well, as shown in FIG. 5. Or, the second mat 22 by itself may be placed over the picture 26 in the well, and the front mat 10 then placed over the second mat 22.
Since the dimensions of the second mat 22 are equal to the dimensions of the well, the second mat 22 fits perfectly within the well and thereby secures the picture 26 within the well.
If picture 26 is a photograph or a relatively thin print, the top surfaces of the second mat 22 and third mat 16 will be approximately flush, and the front mat 10 will rest flat on both the second mat 22 and the third mat 16. When now set in a frame, the front mat 10 provides a slight downward force on the second mat 22 to firmly secure the picture 26 in place within the well.
Preferably, the second and third mats are formed from a single mat so that the same matting material is used in this mat structure as for double matting a picture using conventional matting techniques, where the double matting provides an inner mat border.
Although the above-described double matting structure is aesthetically pleasing, a user may want more of the picture image to be displayed than that provided by opening 18 in second mat 22. Instead, the user may want the larger opening 12 of the front mat 10 to be the picture border so as to reveal more of the picture.